Built to Last

Relics of Communist-era Architecture

A series of ten short experimental films, Built To Last (58 min) presents an audio-visual mosaic of relics of communist-era architecture in the former Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite countries. It features examples of: early sorela (socialist realist) architecture; the vast panel housing projects constructed from the 1950s onwards; modernism of the Brussels Expo style from the 1960s; socialist modernism; the concrete brutalism of the 1970s; and the high-rise buildings of the 1980s. The short vignettes trace an imaginary spiral from Moscow, following the architectural relics of communism in Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, Bucharest, Beograd, Pristina, Tirana, and Sofia, culminating in a climb up the enormous Bulgarian mountain monument of Buzludzha.